


a bridge that's already burned

by shineyma



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-08 08:19:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11077671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: Through no fault of her own, Jemma gets arrested. She rather expects her night to get worse from there.





	a bridge that's already burned

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SapphireBlueJiyuu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphireBlueJiyuu/gifts).



> This is a SHAMEFULLY belated birthday gift for my darling Jan, who is the bestest Jan and whom I adore with ALL MY HEART. She is a gift and a treasure and I am SO SORRY this is so late! My muse has been very uncooperative lately. But finally I've wrangled it into submission in order to share this! I hope you enjoy, darling!!
> 
> Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review!

It’s pure bad luck that does it.

She’s on her way home from work, barely a block away from her apartment, when a fight spills out of the usually quiet bar on the corner. (Actually, fight is rather an understatement; it’s practically a riot.) For a moment she’s caught up in it, forced to duck swinging arms and clumsy fists from people too inebriated to care just whom they’re hitting, and then there are sirens and police and the whole lot of them are arrested.

Jemma included.

Her protestations of innocence are ignored, despite what she considers a preponderance of evidence. She hasn’t been drinking, she’s completely sober, and the scrubs and sensible shoes she’s wearing are _hardly_ typical bar wear. She looks like precisely what she is: an innocent, uninvolved bystander.

The argument doesn’t do her any favors; she’s chucked in the drunk tank with all the rest, left to stew and fume and (though she tries to hide it from the beady-eyed suspicion of the officer on duty) worry.

They took her handbag when they arrested her, of course, and in her handbag is her ID. Her very, very fake ID, convincing though it may appear on first glance. A night in the drunk tank (especially unjustly) is an inconvenience, but being caught carrying false identification could get her into real trouble.

To say nothing of the disaster that might follow. Should they dig into her _real_ identity…well, suffice it to say she’ll have worse things than the _law_ to worry about.

She’s turning over the possibilities—and her options—when a new officer appears in the door. He passes the cells to speak with the officer on duty (Jemma thinks, with a sinking sort of feeling, that she sees money change hands), and then turns back.

“You,” he says, eyes locked on her. “With me.”

Instinct has her pulling back. “Oh, but—”

“ _Now_ ,” he insists.

There’s something unsettled about his urgency—not quite fear, but not far from it. He’s worried about what will happen if she kicks up a fuss. Though not, it appears, worried enough to threaten her. He just _waits_.

Between that, the way she’s been singled out, and the bribe he passed to his fellow officer, it’s really no surprise to find her ex-husband waiting for her at the front desk.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Less than ten minutes later, they exit the station together. Conscious of the number of (comparatively) innocent people nearby—not to mention her relative helplessness—Jemma makes no attempt to run. She doesn’t even dare to entertain the thought.

Instead, she follows Grant to the flashy and expensive-looking sports car parked at the curb and, when he opens the passenger-side door for her, slides in without protest.

He doesn’t comment on her cooperation. He doesn’t comment on _anything_. He hasn’t said a single word to her. After three years of separation, to say nothing of _bailing her out of jail_ , she’d expect him to have plenty to say.

And yet he’s silent.

It’s unsettling—more so in the privacy and closeness of the car, with its dark leather interior and orange-lit dashboard. It reminds her strangely of the Bus’ cockpit, only smaller. Much smaller. So small that she can feel the heat of his body next to hers, the center console too tiny to serve even as an imaginary barrier.

She angles herself closer to the window, putting what space she can between them.

Even so, Grant could easily touch her. He wouldn’t even have to extend himself to do it, merely move his arm. He hasn’t yet (he keeps one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the gear lever as he pulls away from the curb), but she’s sure it’s coming, whether she likes it or not. Grant has never been one to keep his hands to himself. He’ll rest his hand on her thigh or tug at her hair (longer now than he’s ever seen it) or _something_ and her hard-earned composure will shatter like glass.

There’s nothing she can do to stop it. Sooner or later, it _will_ happen. Her stomach is tying itself into knots with the certainty—and the dread—of it, and the longer it takes, the tighter those knots get.

Still, she won’t hurry it along. But the thick silence between them is only increasing her dread as it drags out, and _this_ she doesn’t mind getting over with.

“So,” she says, five awful minutes after they leave the station. “You finally found me.”

Grant makes a sound low in his throat. A laugh, perhaps, or a sigh. “There’s no finally about it.”

“Excuse me?”

His eyes flick to her briefly, then return to the road. The knots in her stomach twist tighter still.

“I’ve known where you were for years,” he says. Simply, plainly, as though the mere _thought_ of him finding her hasn’t been keeping her up at night since she ran. “Had some people keeping an eye on you. Good thing, too; otherwise you might’ve spent the night in _jail_.”

The smirk she’s been expecting finally tugs at his lips, but she’s too thrown to pay it (or his teasing tone) any mind.

“You knew? You’ve _known_?” she asks, dazed and—inexplicably—angry. Or maybe she’s not angry; maybe she’s only sick, sick and resigned, that all her caution and paranoia have been for nothing.

“Head of HYDRA,” he reminds her, as if she could forget. “Your cover isn’t _bad_ , but it’s not good enough to fool my people. It didn’t even take six months to track you down.”

Cover, he says. Like she’s been on assignment, playing at civilian for a mission, rather than _in hiding_.

“So you found me within the year,” she says dully. “Yet you left me alone?”

“I didn’t think you wanted to be found,” he says, and knocks the breath out of her with it. The idea that he’d _care_ —her head spins. “Not after you disappeared without a word.”

There’s censure there, or something like it. An implied criticism of the way she left. It shouldn’t sting—not after everything—and yet it does.

“I didn’t think you’d let me go if I told you I intended to.”

Her quiet defense wipes all traces of amusement from Grant’s face.

“No,” he says after a long moment. “I probably wouldn’t have.”

It’s only a confirmation of what she already knew; she doesn’t know why it hurts.

But now she’s confused, and she angles herself in her seat to better face him, to watch his expression as she lays out the way he’s contradicted himself. (Her knees press uncomfortably into the side of the thin console separating them, but it’s the loss of his warmth against her arm that threatens to distract her. She refuses to let it.)

“You wouldn’t have let me leave,” she says, “but you didn’t do anything when you found me?”

“You expected something different?” he asks, rather evasively.

She’s certain he already knows the answer to that question. “Yes. I thought you’d drag me back.”

Grant’s hand tightens on the gear lever, then relaxes. He exhales slowly.

(Jemma exhales with him, having near-subconsciously tensed when he did. Habit, that.)

“That was the plan,” he admits, “when I first started looking. But…” He wets his lips, uncharacteristically hesitant. “You were scared of me, weren’t you? By the end.”

“I—yes,” she says, more than a little surprised (by his question and awareness both). “Yes, I was.”

Grant nods to himself. “I could tell. I ignored it because I didn’t wanna see it, but after you left…”

He trails off as he shifts gears to take a sharp turn, but Jemma can tell by the tension in his shoulders that he has more to say. She waits.

When he continues, he does so with an unamused huff of laughter. “After you _ran_ , really. After you ran, I had to face some things. And one of them was that I’d given you some damn good reasons to go.”

Jemma can’t disagree. She’s tried not to think of the past at all in the last three years, has steeled herself against memory and pain, but on those few occasions she did, it always served to firm her resolve. She might have missed him, might have felt the guilt of breaking the vows she swore to him, but she was right to flee.

In those last few months, he was dangerous. Erratic, short-tempered, growing more violent and severe by the day. Not to her, no, but she feared she saw it coming—saw her own death (or worse) in the suspicious way he watched her assistants, her colleagues, even his own favored specialists, whenever they dared to make conversation with her.

She’d gone against her conscience to be with him, chose her marriage over her morals, but as she watched a dangerous stranger—a _threat_ —replace her husband, inch by inch, she knew it didn’t matter anymore. Whatever reassurance she’d given him with her choice had faded, leaving only a possessive sort of paranoia in its wake.

In their bed, he was near-violently rough with her. Out of it, he was commanding, demanding, less likely to even listen to her opinion, let alone accept it. She could see the path charted out ahead of them as clearly as if it had been written on their bedroom wall, and she knew it would end badly for her.

And so she left.

Grant sighs, drawing her attention back to the present.

“I’ve never been a good man,” he says frankly. “Never really cared to be, to be honest.” He slows to a stop at a red light and takes the opportunity to look at her, to meet her eyes for (she realizes) the first time. “But I never wanted to be the kinda guy whose own wife was afraid of him—and I sure as hell didn’t wanna be the guy whose wife was _right_ to be afraid.”

Jemma has no idea what to say to that. Her heart is pounding in her ears, fit to deafen her. Hope creeps along the edges of her thoughts; she pushes it resolutely away.

The light changes. Grant breaks her gaze and drives forward, through the intersection, only to pull over less than half a mile later.

“This is your stop.”

The knots in Jemma’s stomach all unravel at once.

It _is_ her stop. It’s her building.

He’s brought her home.

“I—” Tears burn at her eyes. She couldn’t say why, precisely. “I don’t—”

“I didn’t drag you back because I didn’t _want_ to,” Grant says, saving her from her failure to piece a sentence together. He’s twisted in his seat to face her, and her heart skips a few beats at the gentle sincerity in his gaze. “I want you back, don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing I want more. But when you come back, I want it to be your choice. Because you wanna be there. Not because I forced you…or because you’re scared of what I’ll do if you stay away.”

It would be inaccurate to say that the little speech is everything Jemma’s ever wanted to hear, because everything Jemma’s ever wanted to hear is more along the lines of _good morning, the last three—no, four—years have only been a terrible dream, what do you want for breakfast?_

Outside of soap opera-worthy twists, however, it comes spectacularly close.

She should know, then, how to react to it: with a kiss, with a slap, with a stinging rejection that would break his heart just as surely as the moment she accepted that she had something to fear from him broke hers.

Instead, all she can do is stare.

“I’m sorry you had to leave,” he continues, stunning her yet further. “And I’m sorry I got so bad that you’re still scared three fucking years later.”

Her first impulse is to deny it, but that would be a lie. She _is_ scared.

Her second impulse is to forgive him, but even unspoken, the words are bitter on her tongue. He hasn’t earned forgiveness, and she’s far past the point of granting it without thought.

She won’t forgive him. Not yet.

But she has to say _something_ and, unexpectedly, what comes out of her mouth is, “How closely have you been watching me?”

If Grant’s disappointed by the change of subject—the lack of reaction to his apology—he doesn’t show it.

“Close enough my guys raised the alarm when you didn’t make it home on time,” he says.

He’s told her plenty with that—that he’s having her apartment watched, that the watchers know her routine, that variations in her routine arouse interest—but as she recovers from the shock he gave her, her mind is beginning to turn again, and she knows, suddenly, what she really meant to ask. In that sense, he’s told her nothing.

So she asks outright. “Close enough to know that I’ve been dating?”

She gets her answer from the tick in his jaw and the sudden tightness of his expression. His single, sharp nod is practically redundant.

“But you haven’t interfered.”

If he had, she’d know. Her brief ventures into the world of dating (attempts to move on, such as they are) have all been close to home. She’s been out with colleagues from the clinic, with neighbors, with _friends_. If any of them had been killed, harmed, or even threatened, she would have heard about it.

What does it mean that she hasn’t?

Grant turns away from her, sitting back in his seat and staring out the windshield.

“No,” he says, voice rough. “I haven’t.”

Jemma swallows. The hope from before is back, bolder now; it tugs at her, pushes her, a tiny voice in the back of her mind whispering _maybe_.

“Why not?” she presses.

His shrug is tired. “What could I have done that wouldn’t have scared you?”

It might be a trick. Grant is good at the long game; she knows that for a fact. It could easily be a strategic choice: leave her dates alone, bide his time, draw her back in with pretty words and patience, and then, once she’s back with him, once she _trusts_ him, once she’s forgotten she ever dated anyone else at all—then he can hurt the people she turned to in his absence.

That’s a possibility. It would be foolish of her to discount it out of hand.

And yet…

 _I didn’t think you wanted to be found_. That restraint, that concern for her wishes—he’s known her location for _years_ and never came for her, never so much as hinted at his knowledge. It would have been so easy for him, with his resources and his power, to drag her back and keep her against her will.

The choice not to…that could be the long game, too. She must acknowledge that.

But that’s what life _is_ , when life involves loving a (former) spy. She can never know what’s real and what’s pretense, can never draw a line between honesty and strategy.

All she can do is choose. To believe him or to doubt, to trust or suspect.

Of course, her trust in him was broken years ago. A shattered relationship can’t be repaired overnight, nor her emotional scars erased in the span of a single conversation.

She says as much to Grant. “It’s not that simple, you know. Coming back. It will take more than basic decency and an apology to fix this.”

“I know,” he says, very quietly, eyes on the windshield.

Jemma thinks again of _I didn’t think you wanted to be found_ , and then _I want it to be your choice_. She thinks of his expression, then and now. She looks at his white-knuckled grip on the wheel and the gear lever and thinks, _he still hasn’t touched me_.

She wants to believe him.

“You can pick me up on Friday,” she decides. “Eight o’clock. We’ll have dinner.”

Grant’s head snaps towards her so quickly that her own neck twinges in sympathy, and he stares, appearing utterly gobsmacked.

“Unless you’re busy?” she prompts.

“No,” he says, beginning to smile. “No, Friday’s good.”

“It’s just dinner,” she warns. “I’m not making any promises, only giving you a chance. That’s all.”

A different man (a _better_ man, a small, uncharitable part of her thinks) might say that a chance is more than he deserves, or ask if she were sure. Grant only nods.

“That’s all I’m asking,” he says. “Whatever happens— _if_ anything happens—is up to you. Ball’s in your court.”

“Good,” she says. She wants to believe him—she’s _choosing_ to believe him—and so all she can do is take him at his word. “I’ll see you on Friday, then.”

“Friday at eight,” Grant agrees. His gaze seems to have a physical weight as he watches her unbuckle her seatbelt and collect her handbag from the floor; her skin prickles beneath it. “Thank you, Jemma.”

Perhaps she should thank him in return—if nothing else, he _did_ just bail her out of jail—but she finds her voice has deserted her. The night’s revelations, her impulsive invitation, the way he’s looking at her…suddenly, it’s all too much.

Excitement and hope and trepidation and fear all war within her, vying for control. She clings tight to her composure, manages a quick “Goodbye,” and—though she hates to admit it—flees the car.

Her apartment is on the third floor. By the time she reaches it, hope has won out.

Trying again with Grant could end terribly, of course, but she chooses—she’s _chosen_ —to believe that it won’t. To trust, as she once did without thought, that he’s sincere.

 _I didn’t think you wanted to be found_.

He knew where to find her but let her be, simply because he knew that it was what she wanted. He knew she was attempting to move on and didn’t interfere, even though he’s the very definition of the jealous type.

And tonight, having shown up to bail her out of jail, he brought her home. When she got in the car with him, she was _certain_ he intended to take her back to HYDRA, to lock her away until she agreed to be his again. So positive was she, she didn’t even notice the familiar streets and turns he took as he drove her home instead.

He brought her home. He cared what she wanted. He apologized. _She_ made the first move, all but ordered him to take her on a date.

This time will be different—will be _better_.

She’s sure of it.


End file.
